The setup
- Four players in fixed partnerships: you sit across from your partner, and your bids are added together as a team.
- One 52-card deck, dealt out completely — 13 cards each. Aces are high.
- Spades are always trump. There is no bidding for the trump suit; the name of the game settles it.
The bid
Before any card is played, each player announces a number from 1 upward: how many tricks they expect to win. The two partners’ numbers combine into a team bid, and the whole hand is judged against it.
A player may also bid nil — zero tricks — which is a bold declaration to win nothing at all. A successful nil scores a large bonus; a failed one costs the same amount. The partnership game around a nil bid is covered in Spades strategy.
The play
- The player to the dealer’s left leads any card — except a spade. Spades cannot lead until they have been "broken".
- Each other player must follow suit if they can. If you have no card of the led suit, you may play anything, including a spade.
- The highest card of the led suit wins the trick — unless any spade was played, in which case the highest spade wins.
- The winner of a trick leads the next one. Thirteen tricks are played, then the hand is scored.
- Spades are broken the first time a player who cannot follow suit chooses to play one. From that point, anyone may lead a spade.
The single most common beginner mistake is wasting spades early on low-value tricks. A spade played on a worthless pile is a trump you no longer own — and the endgame is decided by whoever holds the last high spades.
The scoring
After thirteen tricks, each team counts what it actually took against what it bid. The arithmetic is deliberately lopsided — it punishes blind optimism harder than it rewards big bids.
- Make your team bid: score 10 points per trick bid, plus 1 point for every extra trick taken. Extras are called bags.
- Fall short of the bid: score nothing for the bid and lose 10 points per trick bid. A bid of 7 that takes 6 tricks is minus 70.
- Ten accumulated bags cost 100 points. This is what stops teams from gobbling up every trick they can.
- A successful nil bid scores 100 points for the team; a failed nil loses 100 — and the nil player’s tricks are scored separately.
- The first team to reach 500 points wins. A team that goes below minus 200 may have the game called against it, depending on the house rules.
A worked hand
You bid 4 and your partner bids 3: the team needs 7 tricks. You win exactly 5 and your partner wins exactly 3 — eight in total. The bid is made, so the team scores 70 for the seven bid tricks plus 1 bag for the extra. Next hand those bags still count: take ten of them before reaching 500 and 100 points vanish. That is why experienced players sometimes play a card that loses a trick on purpose.
The way to get good at that judgement is repetition: play Spades against two computer opponents, and when the rules feel automatic, read Spades strategy for the bidding discipline that wins hands before they start. For a two-player alternative, see Gin Rummy rules.
